Crime/thrillers

Greg Fleming

FORCE OF NATURE

by Jane Harper (MacMillan, $33) Harper’s debut The Dry, set in the Australian outback, was one of the best thrillers of 2017 and set high expectations for the Melbournebased, British-born, writer’s follow-up. Anyone who has suffered through the peculiar hells of a corporate team-building retreat will find plenty of vicarious pleasure here. None of the five women who turn up to spend three days in the wilderness really want to be there and the one who fails to return is the least liked of the group. The Dry’s Aaron Falk, a Federal Agent with a troubled past, is back as is another of Harper’s wonderfully malevolent landscapes; this time the rugged Giralang Ranges, known for an Ivan Milat — like serial killer, whose son is rumoured to still haunt the area. Force of Nature is another crisply written, character-centric thriller that ticks all the thriller boxes while zeroing in on the everyday darkness which lurks inside us all. Sophomore slump? Not a chance.

RED SPARROW

by Jason Matthews (Simon & Schuster, $18) Spies writing spy novels is nothing new — Graham Green, John le Carre, Stella Rimington spring to mind — and Matthews’ 2013 debut, rereleased on the back of the Jennifer Lawrence movie, is a worthy addition to the genre, this time from an American perspective. Matthews started writing after a long career with the CIA; this experience and knowledge of tradecraft and the compelling settings and characters make this a fascinating insight into real-world ops. Dominika is an ex-ballerina recruited by the SVR (the modern-day KGB) by her venal uncle. The title refers to a “whore school” — apparently once a real thing in Russia — where selected men and women recruits were taught the art of the honey-trap. The running of agents, the tedious selfserving bureaucracy, the dead drops, foot pursuits and embassy parties, all the standbys of espionage fiction are here including, bizarrely, recipes at the end of each chapter. Matthews isn’t the prose stylist of le Carre but that doesn’t stop Red Sparrow from being enormously entertaining. The good news? The third and final Sparrow book, The Kremlin’s Candidate, has just been released. But start here and clear the weekend. Highly recommended.

NOTHING BAD HAPPENS HERE

by Nikki Crutchley (amazon.com and nikkicrutchley.com, $30) Crutchley’s crisply written debut is set in the small, fictional Coromandel town of Castle Bay where, yes, you guessed it, “nothing bad happens”. And then the body of missing tourist Bethany Haliwell is found and Auckland reporter Miller Hatcher (who sharpened her investigative skills at the much-missed The Aucklander, apparently) is dispatched to report on the story. Hatcher has the requisite drinking problem but she’s feisty and has added impetus to get the scoop as a promotion is on the line. Crutchley’s great at capturing the smalltown setting and has assembled a compelling rag-bag of Kiwi characters: a dope-growing caretaker, an odd mayor and equally enigmatic wife, a suspicious orchard owner and Hatcher’s fellow guests at a health and well-being retreat. The violent finale might strike some as a step too far but Crutchley’s a promising local thriller talent to watch.

CRYSTAL REIGN

by Kelly Lyndon (Remnant Press, $35) This is quite a change of direction for Lyndon. The opening chapter plunges the reader right into the crazy, violent and present-day world of meth addiction. Though the book has thriller elements, its focus is on the impact of addiction on those around them. It is not another addict’s misery memoir but a chilling and all-too-real chronicle of meth’s power to destroy the lives of those who have never even taken the drug. A timely, powerful and heartbreaking novel as wickedly addictive as the drug it decries. (See profile of Kelly Lyndon, page 16.)